Article Review: Online curriculum for non-EM residents in the ED

In many academic Emergency Departments, there are "off-service" or non-EM residents rotating in the department. They are sometimes invited to the EM residency conference series for the month. Often times though, they have too many departmental didactic events and obligations of their own that they don't have time to attend formal EM didactics.

This is the perfect opportunity for an online didactic curriculum, which can be viewed at the residents' own time. The faculty at Northwestern designed such a curriculum, called the Northwestern University Rotating Resident Curriculum (NURRC). The curriculum consists of 6 voiceover lectures:

ENT and Ophthalmology

Environmental

Obstetrics and Gynecology

Orthopedics

Toxicology

Trauma and Wound Care

Methodology

The NURRC team conducted a 9-month, prospective, randomized study of 54 rotating residents (internal medicine and surgical subspecialties). All residents took one of two 42-question tests (A or B) as a pretest. The residents were then randomized into the control (no formal didactics) or experimental group (NURRC access).

At the 2-week mark, both groups took the other test as a post-test (A or B). NURRC access was then made available to the control group as well. At the end of the 4 weeks, both groups completed an anonymous satisfaction survey. All residents who completed study participation received a $10 gift card to a local cafe.

Results

54 of 58 residents completed the study (92%)

There was no difference in pretest scores between groups (52.6% controls, 50.8% NURRC group)